House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has played down Democratic victories in districts such as her own and that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fending off calls from some of the party’s newer members and politicians to shift leftward.

Ocasio-Cortez, 29, a self-described democratic socialist, defeated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary before winning New York's 14th District last November. She is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress and has become the face of a movement that's pushing for Democrats to adopt more "progressive" policies, such as free health care, free tuition and a higher minimum wage.

But the movement faces resistance from the party’s center and right factions, which believe a significant move left would not win votes and would be a major electoral mistake that would keep the Republican Party in the presidency and hand it control of both chambers of Congress.

“When we won this election, it wasn't in districts like mine or Alexandria's. And she's a wonderful member of Congress, I think all of our colleagues will attest,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, told an audience Monday night at a London School of Economics event during a U.K. visit.

“But those are districts that are solidly Democratic. This glass of water would win with a D next to its name in those districts,” she said, picking up the water at her table.

“And not to diminish the exuberance, and the personality, and the rest of Alexandria and the other members...but the 43 districts—we won 43, net gain of 40—were right down the middle. mainstream, hold-the-center victories.

“If we're going to be helping the one-in-five children in America who goes to sleep hungry at night, who lives in poverty in our country, we have to win.”

CBS’ 60 Minutes interviewed Pelosi on Sunday, during which she dismissed the far-left wing of Democratic representatives, including Ocasio-Cortez, as “like five people.” She previously referred to the Green New Deal as “the green dream” to Politico.

“Now, I'm a liberal from San Francisco,” Pelosi said on Monday night. “I can compare my liberal credentials across the board. And I said to them, anything that you're about, I got that down in my basement 25 years ago. Single payer, all of this. Been there, done that, pushing a stroller many decades ago with all of that, so I share those values.”

She continued: “What we're saying is to have a message that appeals to people that does not menace them, that really does address their concerns. When we win, and we have the White House, and we have that, then we can expand our exuberances to some other things.

“But our message, our progressive message, is down the middle.”

Pelosi said a strongly left-wing message such as that of Ocasio Cortez "works great in my district, I get over 80 percent in my district, these folks do as well, but that's not where we have to win the election."

She added: “It doesn't mean we...curb those enthusiasms. Reach for the moon. Put out there what you want, go for it, talk about it. But when we have to go into the districts that we have to win, we have to cull that with which we have most in common with these people.

“Not compromising our values, our principles. Not even changing our message. Just, taking a piece of the message that we put forward. This is about winning. This is about winning because so much is at stake.”

In basic mid-level management, we’re taught to couch our harshest threats and criticisms in flattery. This old bird Nancy is quite schooled in manipulation. AOC rec’d that message loud and clear, as did we all.

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Lash

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:05 pm

@maporsche,

maporsche wrote:

There's not much written here that I disagree with.

That’s because you’re a Republican like Nancy.

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blatham

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:08 pm

Here are some thoughtful and smart folks talking about the Dem field as it stands now and some of the landmines they better avoid.

Quote:

Intelligencer staffers Benjamin Hart, Ed Kilgore, and Eric Levitz discuss the unease with which some Democrats view Bernie Sanders’s primary candidacy, and whether he’s actually any less electable than his rivals.

Ben: A New York Times piece published today outlined some Democrats’ fear that Bernie Sanders could pull a Trump ‘16. That is, he could ride an unshakable die-hard base and abundant cash flow — and, in the case of the Democratic primary, a proportional delegate system that allows for candidates to hang around for months — all the way to the party’s nomination, as a horrified establishment looks on. Taking ideology and preference out of it, are their fears justified?

Ed: Sure, Bernie could win, but it’s just one of a number of plausible scenarios. Comparing him to Trump’s more than a little specious. Bernie ran in 2016; he wouldn’t be coming out of the blue like Trump, and as Eric pointed out in his latest piece, Bernie’s policy positions are mostly those shared by his Democratic rivals.

Eric: Their belief that it is a possibility is certainly justified. But a lot of the arguments for why Bernie is so formidable applies with more force to Biden (i.e., the fact that 40 percent of delegates will be allocated in the race’s first months, giving early front-runners the chance to amass a commanding lead early on).

Ed: Yep, the calendar could produce an early knockout, or a deadlock. I don’t think the deadlock scenario would be good for either Biden or Bernie.

Ben: This also assumes that Bernie is uniquely ill-suited to take on Trump in a general election, which would be news to the “Bernie would have won” brigades that populate social media.

Ed: Personally, my only fears about Bernie as a nominee are about his age (which is why I wrote that neither he nor Biden should run) and the stuff that’s going to come out about him from the old days when he was hanging out with Sandinistas and serving as an elector for the Trotskyists.

Eric: Right. In my view, Bernie is (at least at the moment) running as a labor liberal in socialist’s clothing. If not for his odd personal branding — and advanced age — I think it’d be hard to make any electability argument against him.

Ed: I mostly agree, though I think the hypothesis that he has special appeal to Trump voters because he sometimes dissents from Democratic orthodoxy on economic issues is suspect. That sort of ignores the cultural angle on Trumpism.

Eric: I think Democrats are strongest when they’re talking about economic issues and exploiting widespread resentment of the rich. And Sanders is very good at steering any and all conversations toward those themes.

Ed: No question that he knows how to stay on message, since he’s been making much of his argument for decades.

Eric: I do think that it isn’t possible to know how his radical past will play in a general election, or whether his nomination would invite a third-party centrist spoiler, or whether he will be as spry in October 2020 as he is today. So there is risk. But it’s not clear to me that he is vastly more risky, from an electoral perspective, than the others — except for maybe Biden, whose head-to-head numbers against Trump are quite strong.

Ed: Again, I don’t see him or Biden as being likely unity figures, and I don’t see Bernie in particular scoring an early knockout, so I wonder what kind of condition a Democratic Party that nominated him would be in. And also whether his “Bernie or bust” supporters would react well to another narrow defeat.

Ben: Right. What about the fear that he, or his supporters, might denigrate a rival in a damaging way, as some accused him of doing in 2016? Will this be a much different ball of wax this time around, given that he’ll be running against 73 people instead of just Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley?

Ed: I think all the candidates should be lecturing their supporters on unity right now. But I haven’t heard of too many “Harris or bust” people.

Eric: I think it’s tricky because part of Sanders’s project is to heighten the contradictions in the Democratic coalition — and thus far, the Democratic
donor class appears to be helplessly affirming his “the political revolution versus the Establishment” narrative. So he’ll always have a bit more difficulty herding his supporters. Still, it is worth remembering that fewer Bernie backers defected to Trump than Clinton ’08 voters broke for McCain,

Ed: I dunno. Most of the whining I’ve heard from the Bernie folk involves alleged media efforts on behalf of Beto and Buttigieg, who, whatever else they are, are not exactly campaigning to go easy on Wall Street.

Eric: I just mean that the Bernie campaign couldn’t have scripted a better print advertisement than that Times article. “The billionaire donors are terrified by my strength!”

Ed: That’s true.

Ben: It seems probable that any party effort to kneecap Bernie will backfire
by burnishing his insurgent credibility. One problem, not to make too sweeping a generalization, is that beyond the actual institutional bias in 2016, some of his supporters also have a tendency to see conspiracies where none exist.

Ed: Well, don’t want to go down an old rabbit hole of my own here, but there has always been a tendency in some elements of the serious left to assume that any opposition to its champions must be animated by corruption. That, after all, has been the career-long signature of Sanders speechwriter David Sirota. As applied to rivals like, say, Elizabeth Warren, that’s just absurd.

But in any event, this is a particularly bad year for anybody or bust claims.

Eric: I think one question here is whether the “anyone but Bernie” sentiment is as common among Sanders’s primary rivals as it is among these donors. If it isn’t, then it might be harder to persuade the 2020 Democratic analogue to Marco Rubio to drop out and rally behind the 2020 Democratic analogue to Ted Cruz to stop Bernie.

Ed: Well, aside from the fact that each of them dislikes the idea of “anyone” other than their own selves… Among their supporters, probably not, outside Team Hickenlooper.

Ed: I think it’s more likely that someone younger than Biden or Bernie emerges fairly early to win some primaries, so it’s not a matter of “stopping” anyone.

Eric: Sure. A lot of ways the cookie could crumble. Harris still seems to me like the logical nominee, but it does feel like her reception has been somewhat lackluster, after a promising initial rollout. Though her fundraising is more than healthy.

Ed: But I agree that a months-long “Democrats in Disarray” scenario where Bernie’s in the lead and Politico is scooping up panicked blind quotes would not be good for prospects against Trump. No matter who wins the nomination.

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blatham

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:17 pm

@maporsche,

Quote:

Here is a Newsweek article that has a lot more comments by Pelosi. She praised AOC several times.

There's not much written here that I disagree with.

Yup. It's a solid rationale. Such Dem strongholds permit the emergence of new bright voices like AOC and allow the party to also protect those who have experience and a proven track record of legislative effectiveness. Both are needed. The obvious example is McConnell. His procedural knowledge has been a fundamental key to how the GOP has managed to become the amoral pack of rats they've become. He gets things done because he knows how and because he's a tenacious, no-holds-barred player. Dems have to play the game the same way (at least in terms of playing "hardball"). And that's Pelosi's strength. As she says, it is about winning. That is the first and primary concern of modern Republicans and Dems can't afford to be dreamy dumbfucks.

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Lash

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:23 pm

I’m sure she meant it as a compliment.
This is how she controls Democrats and how she earns millions from conservative oligarchs...and how she fucks over average Americans.

I'm an average American and I'm happy with Pelosi's undermining of leftist efforts to violate the Second Amendment for fun.

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blatham

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:32 pm

Writing titles for newspaper or news sites is an art form. Pithy, concise and compelling is the goal. Often papers get it wrong by badly mis-characterizing the content that follows (laziness or hoping for clicks) but often they do it right. My favorites are the humorous titles. They can be rather like those wonderful and fun movie reviews such as, for the movie "Pain", the critic wrote a single word, "Ouch". Another was the review for the 1960's film, "The Bible" for which the reviewer wrote, "The book was better".

A title at Talking Points Memo got me thinking about this again. Some of you may have read that the NRA is suing it's advertising firm (the NRATV crowd) for over-billing the NRA. What sort of dollars are involved, you ask

Quote:

The NRA says that it paid big money for AMc for the NRATV work. “By 2017, the NRA’s aggregate payments to Ackerman and Mercury totaled nearly $40 million annually,” the filing reads.

But in any case, the teaser title on TPM's front page for this story is...

Quote:

Hand in the Ammo Box?

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blatham

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Tue 16 Apr, 2019 07:38 pm

Girls and boys. Women and men. Here's one more of the many reasons I am sick of men running the government.

Quote:

TicToc by Bloomberg
‏Verified account
@tictoc
150 teens were killed by their former or current romantic partners between 2003 and 2016.

By the way, for those on twitter, Seth Abramson has been covering the Trump/Mueller issues more thoroughly than anyone else I know of. He's a Harvard law grad, professor and writer. His handle is @SethAbramson. The thread up right now is a must read.